“I can’t,” she kept saying, “I can’t.”
I held the stone under her eyes.
“That isn’t the ring you showed me the other day.”
“It’s yours,” I said, “take it.”
She sucked her teeth in frustration. She was all too aware of the ostracism suffered by Courtney Blankenship before Gaylord came to rescue the silly fool.
“Did you get it at Mr. Gladstein’s?”
“Keep it in your pocket, no one will know.”
“Leave me alone, Jack. What you’re doing isn’t right.”
“What am I doing wrong?”
“You’re a Witcher, I’m a Joyner.”
I couldn’t believe she would put it so baldly. Of course, it was exactly what I believed. In the depths of my being I subscribed to the same class distinctions she did. It’s just I got no advantage by believing in them.
With nothing else to lose, I shoved in to get a kiss. And she slapped me.
She put her hand to her mouth.
She started crying and ran off.
I went on home.
An hour later the electric company shut off our power.
That night I slept in torrid darkness. The big window fan in our dining room was unable to blow. There were no lights in the house, and the candles only made it hotter. Outside my window I heard the voices of Pop and Snead, unnaturally loud. They were drinking beer, smoking cigarettes.
I kept waking up hot and thirsty, half expecting a glow at the window, and the sound of flames flapping in the night as they consumed a cross raised by Mr. Pudding.
10
ON MONDAY, Pop went downtown to pay the bill so our lights would be turned back on. (He was supposed to have paid it the day he visited his bookie.) Even then he had to get the money from Mom, having gambled his own away.
It’s a curious thing about Pop, when he had a job he was a dependable worker, regular as a clock, never took a sick day. It’s only when he lost work that he suffered his moral collapses. Once that happened he couldn’t motivate himself to do anything. It was as though he regarded his time off as a deserved vacation.
My mother had spent most of her adult years raising kids. Until the previous year she had babysat a few brats from her old Lakeside neighborhood, but now that I was old enough to look after myself there was no reason my parents shouldn’t both work full-time. The real challenge facing our family was Pop’s rehabilitation.
All day Sunday she paced about the hot house moaning and wringing her hands. “What are we going to do? All the food in the icebox has spoiled.”
I was behind her, wringing my hands in accompaniment. Pop said I was a worrywart just like her.
I decided to go to the wooded area off Clark Lane, where my brother had taken me the day we met Anya. The brackishness of the creek and the brambles along the way tended to discourage recreational visitation, which made it unlikely my solitude would be violated by beer or tobacco delinquents. I wanted to be by myself so I could think about why Myra had slapped me.
When I left the yard Pop was lying in a chaise lounge beside the house, deprived of the electricity that might have allowed a little Chuck Berry to go with his beer. Mom was still inside, pacing through the rooms.
As I was cutting off the road to go into the trees, Dickie Pudding rode up on his bicycle. My heart sank.
“Where are you going?”
“Down there.”
I pointed into the woods.
He kicked his stand down and followed me through the foliage.
We were thirty feet in when I smelled marijuana and stopped in my tracks. “Let’s go back,” I said.
“What’s that smell?”
“Let’s go back.”
“Wait, there’s someone by the creek.”
“Dickie!”
I gestured frantically. I used hand signals to indicate the perils of approaching strangers in the woods. But Dickie was determined. He took a half-squatting position behind some fern leaves. “Come here,” he whispered, “it’s some guy with a girl! Jesus, they don’t have their clothes on!”
I took off for the street. Dickie came behind me, giggling and calling. “Witcher, come on, you have to see!”
I stood by his bicycle. He joined me.
“It’s your brother. He’s got a girl with him and she has her top off. “
He was breathing heavily and sweat had beaded on his upper lip.
I nodded ruefully. For my brother the gates of Hell had opened wide, and he was determined to take as many girls with him as possible.
“Let’s go back and watch,” Dickie said.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into. If he catches you spying he’ll kill you. He’ll bite your ear. He’ll gouge out your eyes. That’s the way he fights.”
The joy in Dickie’s eyes slowly extinguished. We stood on the street in the fly-plagued sunlight. On the shoulder of the macadam, tar was bubbling up. No breeze whatsoever disturbed the trees.
Dickie pedaled off. I went home and sat in our back yard, without shade. Dogs approached with suffering tongues, asking me to do something to help. Our home was dark, dead. The fan blades in the window moved half a rotation whenever a rare wind passed through them. Not even thoughts of Myra could save me from my torpor.
Mom went to the drugstore and brought back Popsicles, which we had to finish right away to keep from melting. She told me she’d come upon Mr. Gladstein in the aisles of the store and he had inquired about me.
“Have you and Mr. Gladstein become friends?”
“Yeah, he’s a pretty nice man,” I said.
Oddly, this was the succor I needed, to hear that Gladstein had inquired. It was good to know he was on my case. It invigorated me. If it hadn’t been Sunday I’d have gone directly to his store. I wanted to let him know Myra had slapped me.
I went to the spigot at the rear of the house and saw my brother cutting through the yard. Lately he had developed a new way of walking, throwing back his shoulders and bouncing on his feet lightly, like a boxer. When you looked at him he jerked his eyes away, hard as ice.
He came up to me. “You’ve been invited to a party. Next weekend. Pool party at Anya’s. They’re getting it filled this week. She told me to invite you.”
“She wants me to come?”
“You can bring a guest. But only one person. And don’t bring Dickie Pudding.”
He strutted away, rolling his shoulders.
I sat on the grass in a state of wonder. Anya had invited me? A girl who lived in a mansion?
Myra, I thought. I can invite Myra.
The next morning I was at Gladstein’s shop before it was open.
His Continental pulled in at the top of the hill and coasted to his spot and parked. When he got out, the Yatzis dashed to where I was, yapping like sopranos.
“Witcher!” He was happy to see me.
“Go ahead and open up, I’ll come back later,” I told him.
“No, come in.”
He unlocked the store. “I have to go to the safe,” he told me.
He pushed open the door that led to the back room and closed it behind him. I heard slamming sounds and an occasional yap. Then he reappeared with a narrow wooden box clasped in front. He pulled out the display jewels and arranged them in the window, carefully examining each bauble before he placed it in position. He greeted the jewels by name. He asked them how they had slept. Air whistled through his florid nostrils whenever he breathed out.
After he finished arranging the window he waddled to the stool behind the counter. Using a tiny key attached to a chain at his neck he leaned forward and unlocked several drawers just underneath. He pulled each drawer open and examined the accessories inside. Then he pushed them shut.
“Now,” he said.
He blinked. He didn’t seem to remember who I was.
“It’s me. Little Witcher.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you remember Myra?”
A dim torch seemed
to light in his eyes. “The Joyner girl, yes. How is she?”
“She’s all right.”
I had the feeling he still hadn’t come around completely. “You gave me a ring,” I reminded him, “you told me I should kiss her.”
“Yes. The red ring, that’s right. And did you kiss her?”
“She slapped me when I tried.”
“Ah,” Mr. Gladstein said. He placed his hands on his thighs, perplexed. “The bane of man’s existence, Witcher.”
“Yes sir,” I said. I guess he meant women. “Are you married?” I asked him.
“There once was a Mrs. Gladstein, but she passed away. Then I moved to this place. That was a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“And now you have your life. It is the time for youth. Old men must step aside, that is the way of the world. The torch has been passed to a new generation, as our late president once said.”
I wiped my forehead, already filmy with stagnant air. What he had just said depressed me.
Gladstein held forth his hand. “Let me see the ring. I assume she refused it.”
“Yes sir.”
I handed it over.
Gladstein examined it. He turned it back and forth.
“Stay here.”
He rose from the stool with a soft yodel and headed for the back room. The dogs back there yapped and whimpered riotously, as though they hadn’t seen him in weeks. I heard clicking, whooshing, and what might have been a refrigerator door slamming shut.
Gladstein returned. He pulled the rear door to and climbed on his stool.
“Next time you see Myra try this.”
He handed me a ring set with a clear crystalline stone large as a buttercup. I had never seen anything so magnificent.
“This is a diamond!”
Gladstein winked. “Looks genuine, right?”
“Is it fake?”
“It’s crystal, but she’ll never know. How old is she, twelve? Try that one on her.”
“Should I give you money? I don’t have any.”
“It’s a trade, Witcher. Remember? You paid fifty cents.”
I stared at the stone.
“All right, let’s go through this routine once more. What are you going to do when you see her?”
“Give her the ring.”
“And when she has accepted it?”
“Kiss her.”
“Are you imagining that in your mind?”
“Yes sir. I’m trying.”
“Good. Now go. And this time don’t come back until you’ve kissed her.”
“But—”
“Go!” Gladstein boomed.
His voice could have filled a cathedral.
I opened the door. The prissy bell tinkled.
“Witcher!”
I looked back.
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Margaret.”
“I saw her at the drugstore yesterday.”
“Yes sir, she told me.”
“Come here,” he said.
I went.
He whispered a syllable into my ear, an incantation he had devised. I was not to divulge the syllable. Ever. To anyone. I was forbidden to utter it aloud. Doing so would bring me harm. Wonderful things will come to those who respect the power of words, he told me.
I left the shop, silently chanting my syllable.
And I never did reveal it. Not once. Not to anyone.
11
THE NEXT TIME I SAW MYRA she was in her usual place on the Coghill steps.
The Coghill beauties had arranged themselves in a circle in the sun. Johnny Pendleton, one of the neighborhood’s more virulent Witcher haters, was loitering about their yard, amusing the girls with his native wit and sophistication. He was wearing madras shorts, loafers and an alligator shirt he had purchased at Gary’s Fine Clothing for Men, an upscale haberdasher located in the shops at Dogwood Downs, on the way into town. Not quite sixteen, he was between my brother and me in age, although by rights he was Stan’s contemporary. His great distinction in the neighborhood was that of being younger brother to Gaylord Joyner’s best friend. It made him a peer of the realm.
As I passed I made a purely subliminal attempt to signal Myra to meet me in the woods behind Dickie Pudding’s house. This dire message I endeavored to communicate with facial tics and eye movements, and Myra, sensing what I was up to, turned to speak with exaggerated directness to the Coghill on her left. Perhaps my intensity had made me brazen. I kept repeating Gladstein’s syllable in my mind, fixing my sights on her.
There was a flurry on the porch. The Coghill girls had been disturbed, and now they disdainfully took notice. Johnny Pendleton glanced over his shoulder. His chest expanded righteously and he strolled to the edge of the Coghill yard, snarling and ogling me.
“What are you looking at, Witcher?”
The alligator grinned sardonically from his pumped-up pectoral, well informed of my social inferiority.
Pendleton was on the high school wrestling team and could easily have manhandled me. Nevertheless, legends about my brother’s eye-gouging and nut-squeezing tended to keep the older kids at bay. It was well known that Stan would spend his might and his vengeance upon anyone over fourteen who dared to molest me (and indeed, I had once or twice protected the identities of malevolents who’d crossed me, without their even knowing I’d spared their lives). There was, at any rate, little reason to worry about the Pendleton menace with Stan behind me.
I kept leaning to the side, trying to locate Myra.
She had her head averted, rigid with embarrassment. Pendleton saw what I was doing and turned, bewildered, to look at her. Then he looked back at me.
“Get out of here before I kick your ass, Witcher.”
“Try it,” I said. I kept walking while Pendleton stalked at the edge of the yard, riled by his bloodlust.
“We know who Witcher likes!” one of the girls taunted, and everyone laughed, except Myra.
I stooped behind the bush in the Pudding woods and presently she came along, bobbing thoughtfully. She was gloomy and upset and acting as if she were unaware of my presence. Of course, she knew damn well who was lurking in the verdure.
I popped up and called her name. She peered nearsightedly, pretending not to place who I was. And then she said, “Oh, it’s you,” determined to finish the charade.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I have to ask you something.”
To my surprise she stepped into the woods, albeit gingerly, looking for crawling insects and slithering snakes. She came a few yards in and I took an encouraging step in her direction. Immediately she held up a forbidding hand. For a girl of twelve her haughtiness was pretty damn authentic.
“Why did you look at me when you passed the Coghills’?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Don’t ever look at me like that in front of everyone.”
“It’s a free country, I can look at you if I want. But if it bothers you I won’t, maybe.”
“I don’t want you looking at me like that in front of Kitten and Karla,” she said, referring to two of the three Coghills. Why Kathy didn’t count was a puzzle to me, but these complexities of caste seemed to exceed my comprehension.
Myra kept watching me with her hands on her hips. And yet, as my angel of self-love whispered, she was here, right? She had followed me, hadn’t she?
“Okay, so what did you want?”
“I have a new ring for you. This one’s a lot nicer.”
“Oh, Jack.” She clucked her teeth. “Don’t you ever get the message? There’s no way you and I can…” She decided to leave unuttered what might follow the predicating term.
“Just take a look at it,” I said.
She snuck a quick peek.
“Come closer,” I said.
She did. And then she thumped her hand against her chest.
“That’s a diamond!”
I smiled.
“Where did
you get it, from Mr. Gladstein?”
I didn’t say anything, choosing to be enigmatic. She gazed at the stone, all hypnotized by its luster and its luxury, and I said, “Listen, the new people that moved in have invited me to a pool party at their house on Saturday. Do you wanna come as my guest?”
“What new people?”
“That moved into Clark Lane.”
“You mean you actually know them?”
“The girl’s name is Anya, they just moved here from Dallas.”
Myra bit her lip. An intricate display of emotion passed over her face. Her eyes peered into mine…she began to say something…stopped…opened her mouth…. Her lip trembled—and she burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” I said, thunderstruck.
“Because I want to go to the party,” she sobbed, “and I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because of your brother. He threatened to beat up my father.”
“When?”
Then I remembered—the evening at the drainage ditch … Stan punching his palm, grinning at Mr. Joyner. At the time I had indeed assured myself it would come back to haunt me, but so much had happened since then that I’d nearly forgotten about it.
“Well look,” I said, “we can’t let what other people think hold us back.”
“Hold us back from what?”
She drew up her shoulders. How dare I refer to us as us.
She proudly stared away and I allowed myself the opportunity to examine her profile. That she was still lingering made me think I might have an advantage, and silently I began to chant my magic syllable. I believe my lips moved … she bit her lower lip, watching me…I locked my eyes on hers…didn’t let her look away. I must have chanted ten times before I eased up.
She blinked.
“Here.” I stretched out my hand. “Take the ring.”
She reached—snatched back her hand—reached once more.
“It won’t bite.”
She took it. “It’s too big, this is a grown lady’s ring.”
Nevertheless, the ring was now on her finger. Had any Witcher in the history of our race realized the glory that was mine?
“Keep it in your pocket.”
I took her bare brown shoulders in my hands.
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